From image to art
Why my photography has carried words for a year now
The moment the image was no longer enough
What I have been doing with my photographs for about a year now is not a stylistic evolution in the classical sense.
It is not a concept born at a desk.
It is an inner necessity.
At some point, I realized that the image alone was no longer enough.
Not because it had become weaker - but because what I needed to express had grown deeper.
More complex.
Darker.
More fragile.
A photograph can be silent.
It can be beautiful.
It can be technically perfect.
But it can also remain quiet while everything inside me is screaming.
That was the moment when words began to appear.
At first softly.
Hesitantly.
Almost shyly placed beside the image.
And yet I knew very quickly:
They belong there.
Image and text - like two lovers
I consciously connect my photographs with poems, short text fragments, and my own quotations because I want to create a bond in which both elements support one another.
Image and word feel to me like a pair of lovers.
Neither dominates the other.
Neither fully explains the other.
They hold each other.
They lift each other up.
And together they reach a depth they could never reach alone.
The image opens a space. The text gives it breath.
Sometimes the image leads, and the text follows carefully.
Sometimes the text takes the first step - and the image answers with silence.
It is this tension that interests me.
This in-between.
The origin: Ben
The origin of this connection between image and text lies in a rupture that changed my life irrevocably.
The death of my partner Ben divided my life into two parts:
a before - and an after.
With him, not only a person was lost.
A future disappeared.
A shared breath.
A sense of self that had felt natural.
Photography had always been my means of expression, my refuge.
But after his death, there were things that could no longer be contained in light, lines, and long exposures alone.
There were memories.
There was longing.
There was a silence that was loud.
And there were very dark thoughts, the kind one does not speak of easily.
The texts that emerged beside my images were never meant as explanations.
They were a call.
A call to Ben.
An act of remembrance.
An attempt to keep him not only within me, but visibly close to me.
Writing as processing - without promises of healing
These texts carry memory - of our time together, of places, of glances, of silences only we understood. But they are also a form of processing.
Not a straight path.
Not a promise of healing.
Rather a constant rise and fall.
A life lived between collapse and cautious continuation.
Some texts are born from light.
Others from darkness.
And some from the exact moment in between - when you do not know whether you are sinking or resurfacing.
For me, writing does not mean finding answers.
It means learning to endure the questions.
Moving away from technique - towards photographic art
Alongside this inner shift, my relationship with photography itself has changed.
I feel an increasing desire to move away from pure technique.
Away from numbers, settings, perfection.
Away from images that first explain how they were made.
Towards images that allow us to feel why they exist.
I no longer want a photograph to be read primarily through its technical performance.
I want it to touch first.
To create stillness.
To carry a story without fully revealing it.
My work is therefore moving further and further away from classical photography - and towards photographic art.
More poetic.
More emotional.
Less explanatory.
And more honest.
A single image should no longer be just a moment, but a state of being.
A fragment of an inner landscape.
A quiet vessel for loss, love, memory, and continued breathing.
The texts help me build this bridge.
They open the space behind the image without defining it.
They invite the viewer to go deeper - not analytically, but emotionally.
Entre deux souffles - between two breaths
My upcoming book Entre deux souffles – between two breaths - is the natural continuation of this path.
It is not a classic photo book.
It is not a poetry collection.
It is a dialogue.
Between image and word.
Between him and me.
Between what was - and what remains.
Many of the texts in this book are dedicated exclusively to Ben.
To our shared time.
To our shared breath.
To everything that remained unspoken.
And to everything I still want to say to him.
This book is not an ending.
It is a pause.
A breath.
Perhaps also a quiet way of continuing.
Why I show all of this
If my images are now accompanied by poetry, it is not to make them more beautiful - but more truthful.
I show this connection because it allows me to be fully present.
With my story.
With my loss.
With my love.
And perhaps it is exactly there - between image and word,
between two breaths - that resonance emerges.
Not as an answer.
But as a feeling.
